Part 47 (1/2)

Limb turned towards the Doctor, his eyes alive with excitement.

'You see, Doctor, all my hard work, all my waiting has given me a chance to make a difference, to find a position in the world where I can put my considerable talents to good use. This is a clean world, a good world. You've seen the way that our own reality is going... Fear, mistrust, the brink of nuclear Armageddon, all of that is gone here.'

'But I've seen where this eventually leads...' the Doctor was pleading now. 'You know nothing of the future, nothing of the horrors that wait for you along this path. However well intentioned this augmentation is, however elegant it may seem here and now, the price will eventually be too high. And that's not all already our presence is starting to affect the barriers of creation. You've felt the tremors. That is just the beginning. Soon time and s.p.a.ce will start to collapse. You would be destroying everything, just to save your own life.' The Doctor held out his hand. 'We can end this. Come back with me, stop this madness before it's too late.'

The visitor shook his head and steadied his aim. 'I'm not going to end up old and alone lying forgotten in an anonymous hospital bed, Doctor. I'm not going to let them try to save me with their knives and their tubes and their lies. I'm not going to let it happen.'

'And what do you think you're going to do? Shoot him and simply take his place? Purge all those close to you before you're discovered?

Quietly have yourself augmented?'

'What an excellent idea, Doctor.'

George Limb turned and fired three shots into the right honourable George Limb's chest.

'What the h.e.l.l is going on, McBride? Why has everything shrunk?'

Ace's voice boomed. McBride winced.

'Look, I'd love to explain everything to you,' McBride bellowed, 232 'but we've got a few problems at the moment.'

The huge Ace reached down, flicking at the scurrying ants and scooping up McBride and O'Brien in her gigantic fingers.

'This is too weird. One minute I'm standing alongside you dealing with that creep Williams, the next shazam shazam there's a great tearing noise and I'm doing my King Kong impression. She frowned. 'Hey' there's a great tearing noise and I'm doing my King Kong impression. She frowned. 'Hey'

where's the Professor?'

'Ace, this is going to take a while. In the meantime, will you please get Mullen somewhere safe!'

'Right.' Ace plucked McBride and O'Brien from the palm of her hand and carefully put them down on the roof of a nearby building.

'You two stay here, I won't be long.'

Round her feet the astonished soldiers had started shooting at her.

Ace winced.

'Hey stop that! It stings!'

Batting away soldiers and ants with an enormous hand, Ace peered into the makes.h.i.+ft command headquarters looking for Mullen.

McBride gave the incredulous...o...b..ien a weak smile.

'Lucky for us she turned up, eh?'

O'Brien said nothing.

McBride sighed. 'G.o.d knows what the Doc is going to make of all this.'

The right honourable George Limb, prime minister, looked down at the three smoking holes in the fabric of his morning suit. He brushed at the fabric, tutting in irritation.

'My tailor is going to be very unhappy about this.'

Limb stared in astonishment. 'I don't understand...' Hands shaking, he raised the gun and fired again and again.

The Doctor and Rita ducked as bullets ricocheted around the office.

The prime minister gave a horrible, humourless smile. 'For a supposedly intelligent man, you really have been extraordinarily stupid. In one fluid movement he rose from his chair and pushed his desk to one side. The heavy oak table span across the room as if it was made of balsa.

Rita gasped. From the base of the prime minister's jacket a long, heavy electrical cable snaked across the thick pile of the carpet, terminating in a socket near the skirting-board. It dragged behind the prime minister like an obscene tail.

'Do you really think I would permit the rest of this country to reap the benefits of augmentation and not save the best for myself?'

Limb staggered backwards, fumbling with the gun. 'Keep back.'

233.

'Oh, really, George. I'm hardly going to be put off by a few bullets.'

He unb.u.t.toned his jacket and flung it open.

With a cry of pure anguish, Limb dropped to his knees.

'Oh my G.o.d!' Rita covered her mouth with her hand. The prime minister's body was mechanical. All of it. A complex construct of gleaming steel and chrome, pistons and motors, valves and circuits.

Transparent tubes snaked through the metal skeleton, thick hydraulic fluid coursing through them, a bulbous mechanical pump pulsed rhythmically in the centre of the welded ribcage. Most horrific was the head. From just below the collar the flesh was stretched and clamped to the bearings of the neck, livid scars etched into the skin. Bundles of coloured wires twisted round the exposed spine and down into the workings of the mechanised chest. Rita's stomach churned.

With a whir of servos, the old man's head, which sat atop the mechanical monstrosity smiled, reached into the mechanics and flicked a switch in his abdomen. With a low whirr a section of panelled wall slid back, revealing a hidden alcove. Inside the alcove sat a squat silver machine, lights flickering over its surface, a huge gyroscope-like centrepiece whirling and spinning. Relays clicked and clattered as the Prime minister spread his arms wide.

'This is the future that we offer.' Lights on the machine pulsed in one with his voice. 'The perfect fusion of man and machine. A won derful union.'

The Doctor stared sadly at the crumpled figure of Limb on the floor.

'You see, Mr Limb, you cannot escape what time has in store for you.

You are the eye of the storm all the chaos you create cannot touch you. Wherever you turn, this is the inevitable, irrevocable conclusion.'

Tears were rolling down the old man's face.

The prime minister reached out a hand. 'Accept the gift we offer.

Don't try and resist us. We will bring our technology to your world, stretch out across the barriers of reality. Soon you will belong to us.

You will be like us.'

'No.' Limb hissed through gritted teeth, his face a mask of bitterness and betrayal. 'Never.'

Before the Doctor could stop him, he pulled a boxy device from his Pocket, twisting at dials, stabbing at b.u.t.tons. There was a shrill burble of radio noise. With a shattering roar, the gorilla leapt to its feet, clutching at his head.

'Limb, no!' bellowed the Doctor.